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Handout 1: the History of the English Language 1. Proto-Indo-European

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Handout 1: the History of the English Language 1. Proto-Indo-European Handout 1: The history of the English language Cold climate: they had a word for snow: *sneigwh- (cf. Latin nix, Greek Seminar English Historical Linguistics and Dialectology, Andrew McIntyre niphos, Gothic snaiws, Gaelic sneachta). Words for beech, birch, elm, ash, oak, apple, cherry; bee, bear, beaver, eagle. 1. Proto-Indo-European (roughly 3500-2500 BC) Original location is also deduced from subsequent spread of IE languages. Bronze age technology. They had gold, silver, copper, but not iron. 1.1. Proto-Indo-European and linguistic reconstruction They rode horses and had domesticated sheep, cattle. Cattle a sign of wealth (cf. Most languages in Europe, and others in areas stretching as far as India, are called Indo- fee/German Vieh ‘cattle’, Latin pecunia ‘money’/pecus ‘cattle’) European languages, as they descend from a language called Proto-Indo-European Agriculture: cultivated cereals *gre-no- (>grain, corn), also grinding of corn (PIE). Here ‘proto’ means that there are no surviving texts in the language and thus that *mela- (cf. mill, meal); they also seem to have had ploughs and yokes. linguists reconstructed the language by comparing similarities and systematic differences Wheels and wagons (wheel < kw(e)-kwlo < kwel ‘go around’) between the languages descended from it. Religion: priests, polytheistic with sun worship *deiw-os ‘shine’ cf. Lat. deus, Gk. The table below gives examples of historically related words in different languages which Zeus, Sanskrit deva. Patriarchal, cf. Zeus pater, Iupiter, Sanskr. dyaus pitar. show either similarities in pronunciation, or systematic differences. Example: most IE Trade/exchange:*do- yields Lat. donare ‘give’ and a Hittite word meaning ‘take’, languages have /p/ in the first two lines, suggesting that PIE originally had /p/ in these *nem- > German nehmen ‘take’ but in Gk. nemesis (orig. ‘distribution’), *ghabh- words. Gothic and English have /f/ in these contexts, suggesting that PIE /p/ changed into > give, Old Irish gaibid ‘take’. /f/ in these languages. The underlined sounds furnish other examples of systematic Unclear whether PIE was spoken by a single ethnic group. differences between other sounds in IE languages. Systematic differences between sounds PIE-speaking community is thought to have been together around 3500-2500 BC in related languages/dialects are very common because over time all languages/dialects (neolithic). undergo sound changes (sound shifts) in which particular sounds change their pronunciation. 1.3. Indo-European language families Meaning Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic English PIE PIE split into distinct dialects/languages/families due to migration, language contact, father pita pater pater fadar father *pəter- foot padam poda pedem fotu foot *ped- conquest. Ten main families: Tocharian (extinct languages in Western China), Indo- brother bhratar phrater frater brothar brother *bhrater- Iranian (Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Pashto...), Armenian, Anatolian (extinct bear/carry bharami phero fero baira bear *bher- languages in Turkey, Syria, incl. Hittite), Albanian, Greek, Italic (Latin, Romance lges), 6 sas hex sex saihs six *seks Balto-Slavic (Latvian, Russian, Czech…) Celtic, Germanic (Gothic, English, German, 7 septa hepta septem sibun seven *septm Danish...) Few languages in/near Europe are not IE (exceptions are Basque, Hungarian, same samah homos similius sama same *samos Turkish). For more details, see the family trees and maps on the Moodle page. 10 dasa deka decem taihun ten *dekm- tree dru drys trui tree *druo- eat ad- ed- ed- itan eat *ed- 2. Proto-Germanic/Common Germanic (roughly 2000 BC - 250 BC) 3 tri tris tres thri three *trei- Proto-Germanic (Common Germanic): reconstructed ancestor of Germanic thou twa su tu thu thou *tu- languages: live jivah /wiwos/ /kwius/ quick *gwei- West Germanic languages: German, Dutch, English man virah /wir/ wair were(wolf) *wi-ro- The asterisk (*) in the last column marks reconstructed forms. (The reconstructions are North Germanic (Scandinavian) languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, based on many facts beyond those seen in the table. They reflect 200 years of research.) Icelandic The similarities and systematic differences in the table suggest a genetic relation between East Germanic languages (all extinct), e.g. Gothic (the oldest attested Gmc. these languages (i.e. that they had the same ancestor language). They can’t be coincidental language) since the same sound correspondences are found in many other words in these languages, Proto-Germanic speakers: originally IE nomads, settled in an area in Nth Germany and but such correspondences are not found in most other languages in the world (say Arabic, Sth Scandinavia, perhaps around 2000 B.C. (give or take several centuries). Hungarian, Turkish), and especially not in languages spoken in areas very distant from the References to them by Roman authors after about 200 B.C. areas where IE languages were originally found (e.g. Japanese, Zulu, Mohawk, Maori). Very little common Germanic is recorded: a few words written down by Roman st Reconstruction is assisted by knowledge of normal patterns of linguistic change for which writers in 1 century BC & rare artefacts thought to reflect this stage of the language. direct evidence is available (e.g. development of Romance languages from Latin). Proto-Germanic may have been influenced by contact with speakers of now unknown languages (substrate effect: input from conquered people). These languages seem to 1.2. What we know about the people who spoke PIE have contributed a substantial amount of vocabulary to Proto-Germanic. Inferences about PIE speakers, based on vocabulary common to all/most Indo-European 2.1. Proto-Germanic phonology languages, and hence likely to have existed in PIE: They may have lived near Caspian & Black Seas, South Russian steppes. Evidence: Initial stress: Proto-Gmc had word-initial stress, whereas in PIE word stress varied They lived inland but near water. Words for lake, rowing but not for ocean. according to various different factors. Example: *póds ‘foot’ (nominative singular) vs. *pedés (genitive singular) (cf. Sanskrit pás/padàs, Gk póus/podós vs. Gothic fótus/fótaus). 2 The History of English The effects of Grimm’s Law (=The (First) Germanic Sound Shift): 3.2. Anglo-Saxon Settlements A) Voiceless unaspirated plosives became fricatives A traditional idea: In 449 AD hordes of Germanic speakers (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, PIE Germanic Examples Frisians; collectively called the Anglo-Saxons) from what is now Northern lat lat lat greek German lat OE p f pedis /foot, pecus /Vieh, per /for, poly /viel , piscis /fisc Germany/Southern Denmark invaded Britain in waves. Caveat: The idea of an lat lat lat t ө tonitrus /thunder, tenuis /thin, tres /three invasion in 449 is now contested. There may have been significant numbers of Anglo- lat lat goth lat k x/h canis /hound, sequor ‘follow’/saíhun ‘see’, cornu /horn Saxons in Britain long before.1 B) PIE voiced unaspirated plosives lose their voicing By late 6th cent, Anglo-Saxons dominated British Isles, pushed the Celts to the West PIE Germanic Examples latin russian (Scotland, Ireland, Wales Cornwall). Very few Celtic words were adopted in English. b p labium /lip, jabloko /apple The different Germanic dialects they spoke are called Anglo-Saxon or Old English d t decemlatin/ten, ederelat/eat, sederelat/sit latin gk lat lat (the latter term is sometimes confined to the period after about 700 AD when the g k granum /corn, gyne ‘woman’/queen, genu /Knie, ager /acre dialects were established in the British Isles and when the first known texts appeared). C) PIE aspirated stops end up as unaspirated (they became voiced fricatives first, which is ignored here): 3.3. The Viking invasions (787ff) PIE Germanic Examples 787: Scandinavian (=Viking, Norse, Danish, Norwegian) invasions. Continued for bh b bharamiSanskr/ferrelat/bear, fraterlat/brother (PIE bh> Latin f) nearly 200 years. In early 11th cent. England was ruled by Danes (Danelaw). dh d dhe-PIE/facerelat/do, forislat/door, vidualat/widow (PIE dh> Latin f/d) h lat lat lat goth h Linguistic effects of Scandinavian invasions: g g hostis /Gast, hortis /garden, homo /gumo (PIE g > Latin h) Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon were perhaps mutually intelligible, but inflections differed, resulting in eroded inflection (standard assumption, at least). When did this happen? Clue: shift in hemp from Greek kánnabis. The Germanics learned about hemp from the Greeks, who first knew about it around 500 B.C. So the About 1000 words borrowed into OE in late OE period: sound shift occurred after 500 B.C. The sound shift was no longer in action by the (2) anger, bag, both, call, die, egg, flat, get, husband, knife, leg, low, sister, steak, time the Germanic people had contact with the Romans (1st century B.C.), since Latin take, until, want, window, wrong borrowings don’t undergo it (pepper<piper, street<via strata, peach<persica, (3) Pronouns: they/them/their pound<pondo, tile<tegula). (4) Many words with /sk/: sky, skin, skill, skull. (The cluster /sk/ was historically older; in Anglo-Saxon it had shifted to /ʃ/.) Doublets (often with semantic A note on German: Many German words will have other consonants than those seen rd th differentiation): shirt/skirt, shriek/screech, ship/skipper, shatter/scatter. above due to the effects of the High German Consonant Shift (3 -9 century C.E.). (5) Other doublets: bathe/bask, church/kirk, whole/hale, ditch/dike We will not describe this here, except to note some of results of the shift: (6) Borrowing yields near-synonyms: heaven/sky, carve/cut, craft/skill, hide/skin, (1) a. /t/ > /ts/ or /s/: eat/essen, foot/Fuß, tide/Zeit, ten/zehn sick/ill b. /p/ > /pf/ or /f/: pepper/Pfeffer, pound/Pfund, ape/affe, top/Zopf (7) Place names: -by (Derby, Rugby), -thorp (Linthorpe, Althorp) c. /k/ > /x/: make/machen, cake/Kuchen, Dutch ik/ich d. /d/ > /t/: day/Tag, dish/Tisch, middle/mittel 3.4. Old English inflectional morphology e.
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